Beautiful Plastic Ribbon Art

While Gabriel Dawe uses thread to create his ethereal rainbow colored installations, Los Angeles-based artist Megan Geckler uses plastic ribbon or flagging tape. Often used by surveyors to mark spaces on construction sites, the material looks incredibly beautiful when weaved together – whether that be in front of stores, around hallways, or inside shipping containers.

“When distanced from their intended applications, this material lends a manufactured quality to the pieces. The translucency of the material has encouraged me to experiment with light in later works, designing and fabricating diffusers, or sometimes building around the florescent tubes themselves, which share the industrial territory of the flagging tape. The tape becomes the surface and a point of departure for color studies, achieved by layering the material over itself, much like a painter would use a glaze, exponentially increasing the limited palette that is available.”

Delicate and detailed, the tiny floral tattoos of Toronto-based artist Lindsay Asselstine are whimsical works of art. Asselstine—who goes by Lindsay April on social media—is known for her simple, sketch-like style and nature-inspired pieces, ranging from miniature portraits of pets and animals to dainty depictions of flowers and foliage. As an artist at Toronto’s Golden Iron Tattoo Studio, April is often commissioned for her expertly executed flora-and-fauna creations.

Japanese Twitter user @thumb_tani (aka Tanu) has mastered the art of balance. He uses his keen sense of equilibrium to create small, fascinating sculptures from carefully-positioned coins. Although many of us have probably attempted this same sort of coin stacking, Tanu takes these arrangements to a whole new—and totally epic—level. Using a variety of denominations, Tanu creates intricate structures that range in shape and size. Often, he’ll first build a strong base using staggered coins.